Drawn to the devil

To many he's a cult hero, but who'd have thought that 5 Live's horror-loving film reviewer is also a churchgoer? Mark Kermode talks to Mark Lawson about his radio double act with Simon Mayo, his love of skiffle - and how he keeps that quiff in shape

'God's role in the world? Oh, come on. I'm just a guy who likes The Exorcist.' Photograph: Linda Nylind

Mark Kermode's attitude towards movies is often autobiographical. He admits to being a "sucker for any film involving Richard Nixon" because, in childhood, his dad pointed to the television set on which the American president was resigning and said: "Look at him. He is the devil." And the fact he has greater tolerance than many critics for the films of Richard Curtis makes more sense after the revelation that Mrs Kermode (Linda Ruth Williams, a professor of film at the University of Southampton) once watched Love, Actually three times back to back on a flight to the US.

Meeting Kermode in a Soho coffee bar after a press screening of The Damned United, it seems we are to have another review that is influenced by memoir. "Listen," he says, in that growly shout familiar to listeners of his Friday film slot on Simon Mayo's 5 Live show, "I know nothing and care nothing about football, but it isn't about football; it's a film about two people. I liked the idea of two people who are bound together and need each other but in a slightly bickering way."

"Like you and Simon Mayo?"

"Ha! So which of us is Brian Clough and which is Peter Taylor? But I know what you mean. I absolutely love Mayo. You could put a donkey in the studio with him and it would sound better - some would argue that's what he's done with me. The kind of broadcasting relationships I like are the slightly chippy ones; I'd much rather hear people having a go at each other. The key is that Mayo is always able to say, 'Shut up, you're talking nonsense.'"

This bickering - wherein Mayo sneers at Kermode's more esoteric allusions to Buñuel, while in return he is mocked for possessing only an honorary doctorate - has made Dr Kermode (his PhD is official), at 45, the country's most listened-to film critic, a profile increased by appearances on BBC2's The Culture Show and columns in the Observer.

But it's the radio double-act that defines the brand: their movie review hour has just been nominated in the Speech category at this year's Sony Radio Awards, a rare example of one section of a longer programme being honoured. The collaboration began 15 years ago when Kermode was hired to provide film crits on Mayo's Radio 1 breakfast show. But his broadcasting career faltered early on when, discussing movies on Mark Radcliffe's programme, Kermode passed out in mid-sentence - a wireless nightmare still relivable on numerous online sites. The critic believed he'd suffered an asthma attack but medical investigation disputed this view, and it now seems most likely he was a victim of a version of stage-fright, common among actors and broadcasters, in which breath is held sub-consciously from nerves.

Whatever its origins, the problem never recurred and one of the features of Kermode's radio performances now is the easy confidence of his delivery. The show, though, may not be delivered on 5 Live for much longer because the station is relocating to Salford Quays by 2011, as part of a regional repositioning of the BBC, and Mayo has declined an offer to broadcast from the North. So are the movie duo approaching their fade-out?

Kermode becomes as diplomatic as is possible for a man who believes in saying what he knows and feels: "We've had conversations with [Radio 5 controller] Adrian van Klaveren in which he's indicated that he would like to find a way of preserving the movie hour in some way. But it's impossible to work anything out until we know where Mayo is ending up, which we don't."

Or perhaps we do. Although no contracts have been signed, the general assumption is that, within two years, Mayo will be doing Radio 2 drivetime instead of Chris Evans, who will step in at breakfasts on 2, with Sir Terry Wogan moving to weekends. This would be a rare broadcasting reshuffle in which everyone gets a slot they want, with the only dangling question being whether Mayo will continue with Kermode.

As it happens, one of the plotlines of The Damned United is a split between the bickering Clough and Taylor. Might Kermode do a Taylor and go it alone?

"I really think the show wouldn't work without the two of us. I have done it with other people while Mayo was away, and it is a very different beast. So it's not contemplatable to do it separately. I'd like to keep it going, though, because it's a thorough, opinionated movie programme that deals properly with films."

In another unusual display of discretion, he declines my invitation to contrast that description with Film 2009 with Jonathan Ross. But it is possible that the future of Mayo and Kermode will be on television: "Mayo and I have talked for a long time about finding a way of doing it on TV. When we did the radio show from Leeds recently, there was a camera team up there to see what it would look like. We're going to have a look at that footage and consider the possibilities."

Kermode's television outlet is in flux, as BBC television arts programmes have historically tended to be. The Culture Show is again being remodelled, and though he has been assured that he "remains part of the DNA" of the series, he is not sure the best use of him is as a co-host covering all the art forms. "Look, I make no bones about it: I know about film and not really anything else, with the possible exception of skiffle."

The latter enthusiasm refers to the skiffle band, The Dodge Brothers, for which Kermode provides double bass, harmonica, accordion and vocals. But this secondary passion inevitably overlaps with his main one: the band will provide live backing to a silent western at the Barbican on 4 June, and the title of their new album, Louisa and the Devil, is, as Kermode explains with self-mocking pedantry, "a reference to the Mario Bava 1973 Euro horror Lisa and the Devil, aka House of Exorcism".

Horror is at the (skewered, bleeding) heart of his obsession with films - not even the director of The Exorcist has name-checked it so often in public - and one inevitably seeks a Freudian explanation in his childhood. Did someone jump out of a cupboard and frighten him at an impressionable age?

"Ha! From when I was very young, I always liked horror films. I remember very clearly seeing the trailer for The Exorcist when I was 11. I knew that I couldn't go to see the film - but just the idea of it was enough. A car pulling up outside a house, and a voice saying that something beyond comprehension is happening to someone inside. I remember the sense of transcendent terror; a sense of something beyond this world and beyond our comprehension. For some people it's football, for some people it's girls, for others it's pot and, for me, it was horror. And I want to be very clear about this: it made me very happy to be scared. I really liked the feeling and I cherished those nightmares."

His fascination with the devil must also, it seems to me, be connected with his interest in God. His listeners may be surprised to know that Kermode is a practising Anglican. (Intriguingly, Mayo is also a churchgoer, which may be an aspect of their underlying chemistry.) So his interest in The Exorcist is at least partly theological.

"Do you believe in Satan?"

"No! No!"

"Well, some religious believers do."

"Yeah, well, I'm not Catholic. I'm C of E, brought up a Methodist. I think, simply put, there is more to our world than this. But I don't believe in doctrinalism: I don't think it's anyone's job to tell anyone else to believe. But, obviously, if your favourite film is The Exorcist, it's going to be tied up with your religious beliefs in general. I've had some of the best discussions in my life with priests, because I am very interested in that theological area. One of the great things about The Passion of the Christ [Mel Gibson's 2004 film] is that I never had to put up again with people at church saying: why do you watch these terrible violent movies?"

"Oh, come on, Mark. This is all beyond me: I'm just a guy who likes The Exorcist."

His faith, though, clearly does shape him as a film critic. As well as evincing a tendency to over-praise horror movies, he is also prone to underestimating movies about adultery, from which he will tend to emerge saying the silly idiots should just have their heads banged together and be told to go back to their spouses.

"Yes, I'm moralistic. I have a very small circle of close friends, who I've known for a very long time. And I've been married for a long time. And that's how I like it. I am who I am because of who I'm married to. And - this is getting a bit philosophical - I believe in trust above all things. I believe in saying what you mean and doing what you say you mean. I'm sure that I am as guilty of hypocrisy as the next person, but hypocrisy rattles me."

He was badly affected by his parents' divorce in his early 20s and, in the aftermath, took his mother's maiden name by deed poll. And now his own young son and daughter have their mother's surname.

His wife, Professor Williams, specialises in writing about erotic cinema. "When she was writing a book, Linda would disappear off to the office and watch 10 films back to back with titles like Sins of Desire, Body of Influence, Evidence of Underpants and so on. Always three words. And she became interested in the fact that they were always more interesting than Basic Instinct. The way we met in the middle was that I believed in the same connection between horror movies and mainstream cinema. I think you do have to be able to understand trash in order to understand mainstream cinema."

Kermode's marriage may, in fact, be his major weakness as an interpreter of cinema. It makes him dismissive of films about infidelity, and inexplicably susceptible to Richard Curtis's daft romances: "After I did The Boat That Rocked on Mayo, I got a text from one of my closest friends saying: 'The review that sank your credibility. You sad shit.' What can I say? I laughed. I can't lie."

When he laughs, his body shakes, but the quiff never trembles. How? "I use Red Dax and Sweet Georgia Brown. Sweet Georgia Brown gives you the slick and the smell, but Red Dax gives you the hold."

• Mark Kermode reviews films every Friday on Simon Mayo's show on Radio 5 live. Download the podcast at www.bbc.co.uk/5live

• This article was amended on Friday 10 April 2009. In the article above we mentioned that the film critic Mark Kermode is a practising Anglican. But contrary to the piece, this doesn't extend to being a Sunday school teacher, the subject says. This has been corrected.